


what we do afterwards

by lucidabista



Category: Little Fires Everywhere (TV 2020)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, If I don't abandon this project it will have a happy ending lmao, Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25258492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucidabista/pseuds/lucidabista
Summary: April felt bad before Izzy disappeared. Now, it's so much worse. So much, in fact, it's making her reconsider some things.
Relationships: Izzy Richardson/April Jarvis
Comments: 30
Kudos: 56





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language so feel free to point out mistakes or non idiomatic phrases. I will not take it personally.

April was already feeling... weird, before Izzy disappeared. She would have trouble sleeping sometimes, ruminating, asking herself over and over: why did she let Izzy kiss her that time? why was she so dumb? why didn't she think better? She would have nightmares, too, nightmares where her teeth fell, where she found herself naked in front of the entire class, where her friends laughed at her and their laughter was so loud, and their mouths opened so wide, and their teeth became sharp like shark's teeth and their eyes became yellow and suddenly they were monsters. She would also, sometimes, be visited by the ghost of Izzy's kisses, hugs, words; and she would feel so guilty, so dirty, and she would be so scared that someone else would read her mind and find all of those memories there, or, worse, all of that longing there. But she was surviving, and people at school seemed to have mostly believed her, so she was fine.

That is, until Izzy disappeared. She heard the rumour, at first. Her parents had told her, with a smirk on their face, that the Richardson's house had burned down, and that people though that Izzy had done it. She felt weird hearing that too. And then, for days, Izzy didn't go to school the next day, and neither did any of her brothers. But then her siblings went back to school, now oddly silent, eerie even, but she didn't. Some of April's friends said that she had gone to jail, others even said that she had died in the fire. And so, without being able to control herself, April would search for Izzy in school, everyday. She never had noticed her absence like this before. Was she really dead? Or in prison?

That's when things started getting even weirder. She would sometimes wake up at four or five in the morning, startled, fully conscious, and could not go back to sleep. And the nightmares would sometimes feature Izzy, burned, dead, blaming her. "Why are we not friends anymore?" she would ask, first in a murmur, then again and again, until she was yelling, crying. It was so bad even her new friends, who normally didn't notice anything about her, started noticing that she would space out in conversations. Was she really dead? Or in prison? Was she hurt? Suffering? Was it her fault? It had started to become unbearable. She needed answers.

So one morning separated from her groups of friends, who continued walking down the hallway, and approached Moody, which she always considered to be the nicest of the siblings. He was retrieving something from his locker. She got nervous and turned her head to make sure her friends weren't watching. But it would be okay if they did, she guessed. Moody was mostly safe.

"Hey," she said, with a smile. She had a hard time not smiling while talking these last months, even when she didn't feel like it. 

Moody took a good look at her. She though she felt hatred in his eyes. And then he ignored her. April bit her lip.

"Hey, I know we haven't talked in a while, but I really need to know if Izzy is okay." Her voice broke saying the last words, and this time the faint smile she made wasn't so credible; a keen eye could even have guessed she was actively stopping herself from bursting into tears.

He took the last of his things and closed the locker violently.

"It's a bit late for that, don't you think?" he said, while walking away.

She grabbed his arm to stop him.

"Please, Moody," she begged. "I'm having a hard time with this."

"Yeah, and how do you think _I'm_ feeling, eh? My sister is fucking missing, for Christ's sake. You weren't even friends anymore. In fact, you were the opposite."

Even though Moody clearly wanted to hurt her, April stopped hearing after "missing".

"Do you mean she's not dead? Or in prison?" she quickly asked, almost excited.

Moody sighted, visibly irritated.

"You're amazing, April. I can't believe Izzy was ever friends with you." He started leaving, but he stopped. He took some time before turning around. His face was now different. Sadder. Almost broken.

"And, by the way, missing does not equal alive. We really don't know if she's alive or not." He took a pause and a long breath before saying, "She could be dead."

April had a hard time concentrating in class after that. She started to feel nauseated, sick.

Where could Izzy possibly be? And was she in danger? What can she do by herself in this country? She's just my age, and there's so many bad people out there. Someone could kidnap her, or drug her. "April?" Someone could manipulate her, do who knows what. "April?" And obviously she's going to run out of money, and maybe have to sleep on the streets, out in the cold...

"April!" said, loudly this time, the teacher.

April looked up, surprised.

"Can you give me the answer to the problem?" There was an equation written in the board.

April just stared at it. Her mind was foggy; she could barely read the numbers, much less solve the equation, but she tried. The room was silent for a few seconds. Then she realized everybody was looking at her. Were they thinking she was weird? Did they know she was thinking about Izzy?

Words wouldn't come out of her mouth.

The teacher dodged some tables to approach her.

"Hey, are you okay?" April just stared at her, horrified by her own behaviour —why was she acting so weird? why couldn't she just say she didn't know how to solve the equation? what could she say to make it all go away? The teacher looked at her and seemed to ponder the situation. "You look a bit pale, why don't you go to the infirmary?"

_Yes. Good_ _idea._

Since April didn't seem to react much, the teacher asked some random student to take her to the infirmary. She does not remember who.

The nurse had a very kind looking face, round eyes and a warm smile surrounded by medium-length brown hair. She took April and led her to a bed, which was covered by a long paper and separated from the other beds by a room divider, and then left her for a moment to talk with the student that had brought her there.

She then returned and sat next to her in the bed.

"Hello... April, right?" Her voice was very soft, and low. "Your friend here tells me you look pale and you're not speaking. Is everything okay? Does something hurt?" She seemed so sincere and caring.

April slowly looked at her, then shook her head. It took some time, but she managed to say "No, I'm fine."

The nurse pressed her lips. Her instinct told her there was something happening.

"Is there something you want to talk about?" She pressed April's shoulder. "You're safe here. You can trust me."

"No, no, I'm fine. It's nothing. I was just thinking." Her voice was breaking.

"Honey, you're not fine, I can tell. Do you want me to call your parents?"

"No, please don't call them." She shook her head again, and some tears started running down her cheeks. "They don't understand."

"Don't understand what? Honey, you're worrying me. Is everything okay at home? Did somebody hurt you?"

"No, no, it's not that." She burst into tears. " _I_ hurt someone. A friend." Her shoulders went up and down as she cried, almost convulsing. It was hard to talk; it was hard to breathe. "I ruined her life. And now..." She had to take a lot of violent, short breaths, which were accompanied by a wheezing. "And now she may be dead and it's all my fault." Then she started to cry violently.

"Oh, honey," said the nurse, "come here," and hugged April. "Now that's not true, isn't it?" She put her hand on the teen's head, trying to reassure her. "Things seem like that when you're young, but I'm sure it will be okay. You will make up and be friends again."

"No, we won't. It's too late." April managed to get those words out, albeit with difficulty, amongst all of the sobbing.

The nurse took her by the shoulders in order to be face to face.

"Hey, look at me. Look at me. We all make mistakes, okay? It's part of life. We all sometimes hurt people we love. But what's important, what distinguishes good people from bad people, is what you do afterwards. Things aren't over. It isn't too late, okay?" The nurse was searching for April's gaze. "And I'm pretty sure if your friend saw you in this state she would forgive you."

"I don't think so," April said, and continued crying. The nurse held her for a couple of minutes, hearing a "It's all my fault" and a "I'm a bad person" here and there, and reassuring her. Then, when she cooled down a bit, she got up and called her parents. This was definitely not your average teenage drama. She explained what she understood to the parents.

The mom arrived in half an hour. She seemed kind, and took her daughter with her without many questions. She just seemed worried. The nurse sat there for a while, wondering what could have happened between the two girls, but soon enough a kid with a bruised knee needed her attention. 

April's mom put her in the car and drove all the way home holding her daughter's hand, and muttering reassuring words, saying "my baby" a lot of times, and asking a lot of questions. However, the questions only lasted a few minutes; seeing her daughter didn't answer or just said "It's nothing", she told herself it may be better to get her into a bed first. And so she did: she tucked her in, she brought her an herbal tea, and finally seated down next to her. She gently caressed her face, and her hair.

"My baby. You need to tell me what is going on. You have me worried sick. The nurse said you got into a fight with a friend? Is that why you're like this?" The nurse explanation seemed insufficient to her. There had to be something else for her daughter to get so worked up. 

April looked at her mom, and her mom could sense she wanted to tell her something.

"April, you know you can tell me anything. I love you and I'm going to protect you no matter what." Was it some boy? Or did someone hurt her daughter?

"It's just..."

"Yes?"

"It's just I'm worried about Izzy, mom." Her mom didn't say anything. "And I think it may be my fault that she's missing", April said, and started crying again.

"But honey, she _molested_ you. You have nothing to feel guilty about!" There was so much disgust in her voice.

April looked at her. "Mom." She was going to say it.

"What?"

She could not take it anymore. It was the secret, the lie that started all of the bad things.

"She did not molest me, mom."

"What?"

"I lied. She was my girlfriend." She started crying even more. "I'm sorry, mom. I'm sorry."

"No, you're lying. You don't know what you're talking about. You're just upset." She stood up. Her face was expressionless. "You're going to feel better after sleeping a little bit." She left the room.

  
April was left alone. She cried until she fell asleep. She was very tired, and her head hurt; however, she felt a pressure had been lifted off her chest.

In the days that followed, her mom acted like nothing had happened. It was fine by April; she had regretted telling her the minute she woke up. She was too embarrassed by it. Yet somewhere, deep down, she was glad she had told her: now it wasn't her that was denying it. It wasn't her. And hey, she hadn't been kicked out of the house, or disinherited. Her mom still loved her, it seemed. That meant so many of her fears... were made up. Not true. And that changed everything.

She started defending Izzy, too. I mean, not exactly defending her, but whenever someone would say that she was in prison or that she had died in the fire, she would correct them. And sure, sometimes that meant someone would tease her, but she would harshly point out that there was a missing girl, and that that was some serious stuff. Nobody deserved that. And it was funny, because that shut them up real good. You could even see the guilt in their faces. Not on all of them —some had stopped talking to her and would laugh at her back. But in enough faces. And what's even better: sometimes other people would speak up too, and support her. Just like when she continued the jokes on Izzy; but this time, it was to defend her, and she was the one who spoke first, who lead the reaction. "You don't have to pretend to be someone you're not", she had said, and maybe she was right.

Yet she still felt this weight in her chest. She still woke up too early sometimes. She still felt out of breath. Izzy was still out there, somewhere. Maybe dead. Every night she dreaded waking up to the news showing her bruised body on some dark alley. And it was her fault that she had escaped. But she didn't know what to do with it.

"Hey."

It was Moody. This time she was taking her books from the locker.

"Hey. What's up?" The smile was still there. Always.

"Look. I wish I could say sorry for the other day, but I can't. You betrayed her, and I can't forgive you for that."

"Hum. Okay?"

"But, the thing is... We need help. We need callers. We just aren't enough. And since you said you felt bad and all, I though maybe you would want to help."

"Callers?"

"Yeah. We're calling bus stations, youth shelters and stuff like that nearby, asking if they have seen her. It's not much but we just have to do something. You in?"

April froze. Defending her was something, but calling for her? She had already lost some friends.

"Emm. I have to see if I can..."

"Ah, don't bullshit me. If you don't want to do it it's fine. It doesn't surprise me anyway."

"No, wait. I can. I will. Sorry."

Moody threw a doubtful stare at her.

"Sure. Here," he said, handing her a card with an address written on it, "come whenever you can. There's always someone at the apartment these days."

She didn't go right away. It felt too weird, seeing the Richardson's again. She was scared too. What if someone from school found out? What if all the things they had done to Izzy, they started doing to her? Not even Izzy had tolerated it, and she was much stronger than April.

However the guilt, the weight in the chest, the nightmares, the waking up in the early morning. The good memories of Izzy, the fear of what might happen; and the nurse. We all make mistakes. What matters is what you do afterwards. It was that fear that had led to Izzy escaping, fighting that fear may as well bring her back. So she went in. The first time, she was incredibly nervous, racing heart and sweaty palms and all. But they didn't seem to care. A person which was not from the family answered the door, probably another volunteer, and nobody paid much attention to her. She thought some of the members of the family purposely ignored her. Maybe they also hated her, like Moody.

They had roughly and quickly turned the living room into a small call center, with four tables with four phones on top of them, next to what seemed like a telephone address book. She got to work. She called several numbers, and nobody had seen her. And so she went the next day, and the next one. And many days after that.

With time, the Richardson's warmed up to her a bit. She also unwillingly witnessed some of their fights; it seemed many members of the family blamed Elena for Izzy's disappearance. It didn't surprise April, really, they never had a good relationship. But it was nice to think that maybe it wasn't all her fault.

They got a few clues every now and then. Maybe someone said they had received a teenager that looked like her here or there. Bill or Elena would drive there to check, show some pictures, verify information. They had confirmed seeing her at like three places, but it wasn't much. The last one was a little more than a week ago, so April's anxiety that she might be dead had toned down a bit. It certainly helped to be a caller in that sense.

One day, the news crew from a mildly important TV station came over. Everyone was very nervous: Izzy might actually see it.

The crew was obviously searching for a sensationalist story, so they really pushed the Richardson's when interviewing them. They dug into the why she had escaped. They explained the fight, they also mentioned the bullying. Elena ended up crying, apologising for the fight they had had, begging Izzy to come back. She said she had changed. And all of the sibling insisted on how much they missed her, how worried they were, how much they loved her. The father assured her that nothing wrong was going to happen if she came back, no grounding, no nothing. They would just be happy to have her there. They would let her be herself. They also explained that it wasn't her who burned down the house. It would be able to finally tell that to the people at school.

April didn't know if she believed all of it. That family was a mess lately. They had been so mean with Izzy before, and people don't change like that, from one day to the other. But maybe something had changed after all. It was difficult to tell.

April though it had ended when the reporter approached her.

"Hey, what's your name? You're a volunteer here, right?"

"Hum, hello. I'm April. And yes, I'm a volunteer."

"Would you mind saying some words for the camera? It would be super quick. The most important part is the family anyway, but it's always nice to hear other members of the team."

"I'm not really sure about it." Everyone would know. But maybe Izzy would hear it too.

"Come on, it will only be a few questions. It can help bring the girl back. And don't you want your 15 minutes of fame?"

April ended up accepting. They put some make up on her, and then seated her on the sofa. The cameras were a bit intimidating, but she focused on the interviewer.

"So, could you tell us your name, explain who you are, and tells us what you do here?"

She briefly answered.

"And did you know Izzy personally?"

She bit her lip. She was going to say she was an acquaintance from school, but she caught Moody staring at her from the other side of the room.

"Yes. We were best friends." The reporter noted the "were" in her mind.

"Wow, that must be very hard, right?"

"It is, it's very hard."

"Do you miss her?"

"Yes. A lot."

The reporter didn't seemed convinced. She needed something more potent, and she could tell that April was putting a poker-face.

"Izzy escaped, and we have seen there was a reason for it. Maybe now she wants to come back, but she can't. Or maybe, she can come back, but she doesn't want to. She still does not feel welcome here. We have seen what her family has to say about it, and hopefully that fixes part of the problem. However, she was bullied in school, correct?"

"Correct."

"And so, what can you tell her about that? Considering she may watch this, what do you want to say to her, April? To make her come back?"

April took a moment, and looked at the camera.

"That I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Izzy. Please come back. I... told my mom about what truly happened. I regret it. I'm sorry. It's going to be okay. Please come back. I miss you so much. I love you."

"Does that mean that the "were" best friends will be an "are" best friends again?"

"Yes, yes, a hundred times yes."  
  
The reporter thought it was a "meh" statement (I mean, what kind of best friend is that?), but there was something worthwhile in the girl's expression. So much suffering. The viewers were going to love that.

And the viewers, indeed, loved that. Specially that one viewer, in that one sleazy restaurant where they had allowed her underage self to work. It also didn't help that the owner had recognised her from the TV and, well, he had already called the number. But Izzy wasn't going to run away again this time. She didn't really trust any of them, but she was curious. And kinda tired too, to be honest. She was only 15 after all.


	2. Chapter 2

A lot of weird things had happened to her in her life. Once, she had a very weird dream about his brother and crutches, and the very next day his brother fell and he needed them. Another time, she saw one of her mother married friends kiss another a man that wasn't her husband in the streets, from the car. She also can't forget that time when she saw a dead insect in the floor, in the garden, but its leg kept moving, in a rhythmic, monotonous tone. Oh, and she swears by her life that when she said Bloody Mary facing the mirror three times, at midnight, something moved in the other side.

However, this was the weirdest thing to have ever happened to her. So weird, in fact, she couldn't process it all at once: she had to do it by stages, one at a time. So, first, her mother, her arms wide open, running to her. That's one thing never seen before. Then, her mother crying, the face all puffed up, the make-up running. That's an entirely new phenomenon. The loving words? Another surprise. Specially because there was so much of them. Probably more in ten minutes that she had heard her whole life. The entire family hugging her was another interesting experience. The cherry on top was certainly the whole mass of reporters around them —the clicks of the cameras, the flashes, the sea of questions. A direct consequence of this last point is that this moment, the weirdest moment of her life, was flaunted at her from almost every newspaper and every TV for two entire weeks.

It was certainly a beautiful illusion while it lasted. She wasn't dumb, so she never entirely believed it, but she could resist the temptation of following along. For days, her mother would wake her up with a soft smile, offering to cook whatever she wanted for breakfast. Elena would then say, almost to herself, that it was so great to finally have her here, have her back. Izzy would think, in the back of her mind, that her mother wasn't happy to have her back, no, she was just happy to not be considered a bad mother any more. But she would brush off those thoughts and ask for pancakes. None of her siblings criticised her, and while her choice of clothing wasn't free from a few worried looks by Elena, the issue was no longer addressed. They also had started seeing a family therapist, Dr. Ingraham, mostly because, again, it would look bad if they didn't. Izzy kind of liked her, though: she was the one that helped her convince her mom that wearing black and ripped jeans wasn't truly a punishable offence.

She could draw and paint and make collages all day, and on the few occasions she went out to explore the city or to buy groceries, people —even kids from school— would act surprised and then smile to her. Some of them even talked to her, and asked her about her time as a runaway, to which she would normally respond with an over the top, mostly made up story that made her look bad ass but was also kind of a joke. She doubted people got the last part though.

The only thing that was lacking, was, of course, April. Moody told her how she had acted worried about her, how she had helped with the search. Hell, she had seen her, that night, on TV. The big, clear, ocean eyes, and those words. False promises, it seemed. It wouldn't be the first time. Lesson learned, she thought. Yet, all of that left her with so many questions. Why had she helped, when she had so clearly shown she didn't wanted anything to do with her? Izzy didn't understand, and that bothered her. And maybe what bothered the most was that, even if April had been so cruel with her, that behaviour, that not understanding, that left the space for hope. And hope, with April, had too often resulted in pain. 

Sometimes she would spot groups of kids talking and looking at her, which was not particularly nice, but was also better than being called names like before. Who would have say running away was a good way of making people forget you're gay? _Any new thing that distracts them from their boring lives,_ she thought, _is a good excuse to forget the last distraction_. Oh, Shaker Heights. You never change.

And so, of course, one day the little illusion started breaking.

They were eating dinner at the new table, all of them. As usual, Lexie and Trip were telling their stories of success in school, or rather, now, just stories of mostly well-adjusted teens in school. The stories had lost the self-important tone, and were even in some rare occasions sprinkled with sincerity and authenticity, but they still felt so... empty, for Izzy. Also, they felt as stories she could never star. Yet, as an act of reciprocity and to show her gratefulness, she saved up her scornful remarks to herself. However, this time, Trip's story about how his friend Steve tried to cheat on his math test by writing all the formulas on a tiny paper and got caught by accidentally turning in the tiny paper with the exam test —admittedly a funny story— ended with an awkward laugh, followed by and awkward silence.

"And... speaking of school," Elena said, slowly moving her gaze from Trip to her, "when are you going back, Izzy? It's almost been three weeks." A short silence followed. "You could lose the year."

Suddenly, the anxious eyes of the entire family were on her. Oh. _This intervention certainly has been planned._ It didn't matter, though. She had also planned her response too.

"I'm not."

She said it with a smile on her face and no hesitation whatsoever.

"What?" her father asked.

"You've heard me. I'm not going back to that school. I hate it there. Might as well tell me to run away again."

"Don't!" her mother quickly advanced, "Don't joke with that. It's not funny."

"What do you mean you're not going to school? You _have_ to go to school, it's not even our choice. It's the law. Don't be ridiculous," said her father.

"Yeah, believe me, if not going to school was possible, I'd know it," said Trip.

"Oh, please. Like you suffer much in school," replied Izzy. "And by the way, I know. But I was thinking, maybe I could be homeschooled." She suspected they were not going to allow it, but she had to try.

"Homeschooled? Ha! By who?" asked Bill.

Izzy instinctively looked at Elena, and when Bill noticed that, Izzy also realized how absurd that would be.

"I have a job, Izzy. Plus, I wouldn't know how to teach you anything," said her mom.

_More importantly, we would kill each other before the end of the year, mom._

"Okay, maybe not homeschooling. But Cleveland. I'm really not going back to that school."

"But Izzy, it's one of the best schools there is. Cleveland's schools are not nearly as good as ours," argued Bill.

"Yes, and you would have to go there by yourself, take the bus, who knows," continued Elena.

"We wouldn't be there either," said Moody, speaking for the first time. That did hit Izzy a little, but she didn't respond.

"I'm pretty sure everyone forgot about before, Izzy," intervened Lexie.

"I don't care if they forgot. I hate them. I want to go to Cleveland."

And that's it. That's all it took for the illusion to break, or to start breaking, at least. Her mom told her, repressed fires in her eyes:

"I'm not letting you ruin your future, Izzy. You're going back to school, to _our_ school. End of discussion."

"You can't force me."

"Oh, of course I can, Izzy," replied Elena, raising her voice. "I'm your mother," she said, severely, "and you will do as I say. I did not sacrifice my life for you to throw yours out the window. Who cares if you hate them, you hate everyone, it doesn't matter where you are."

"Mom!" Trip quickly called her. He looked at her, opening his eyes and raising his eyebrows. "Stop. Please."

The table was silent for a bit, as Elena realized how she had behaved.

Izzy pushed her chair back and was going to leave.

"No. Please stay," pleaded her father, his tone moving enough to make her stop mid-air. "You're not the one who should be excused."

The last phrase was surprising. Elena turned her head to see him. After a brief pause she said:

"Your father is right. I'm sorry, Izzy. I will... take a walk, I guess." She got up, picked her coat and approached the door. "That does not mean this conversation is over, though." And she left.

The table was silent again, and now, the silence was more awkward than ever.

The days that followed she heard more than a few fights between her parents. Her dad took her side, luckily. Elena still didn't seem to realise that her daughter's CV wasn't more important than her happiness. Or not even happiness, her will to live. Anyway, Moody told her that it used to be like that before she returned. Maybe that was the way it was going to be from now on. If they stayed together, that is.

"So..." one day Moody asked, while her parents were discussing the subject, "you're really not going back to our school?"

"Yep."

"We will miss you." Izzy didn't respond. "I'll miss you. Hell, I have missed you all of this time, school just isn't the same without you."

"Well, I guess not having me to bully must put a lot of pressure on you, fellow nerd," she said, with a smirk.

"Ha, I guess you could say that. And with Pearl gone too, we're less than ever." A dark cloud crossed his eyes. "There's nobody interesting left."

"Well, that's kind of my point."

"Fair enough."

There was a silence. Moody wanted to say something.

"Won't you miss... April, though? I mean, these days, you're not seeing her outside of school either."

"I thought you hated her."

"I mean, I do. But I'm working with what I have here, you know, since you don't really care about any other person at school. Plus, she did seem... legit, with her worry and all. She did came here to call almost every day."

"Well, perhaps you were wrong assessing her sincerity."

"But hasn't she, like, called you or something? Have you seen her since you came back?"

Izzy looked at him, saddened, and said reluctantly: "No. She hasn't."

Moody pressed his lips. "And have _you_ called her?"

"No, why should I? I mean, I'm the one who just fucking went missing. She's the one who needs to do all of the apologizing."

"Yeah, but..." Moody stopped. "No, you're right. She's the one who should talk to you." He stopped and seemed to think about something for a bit. "Anyway, do you fancy watching a movie?"

  
Izzy said she shouldn't and she knew she shouldn't. If April was truly interested in her, she would've called a long time ago. Hell, not only if she was interested in her: if she was just a friend, a decent friend, she would've called. It was really the bare minimum, and she was tired of reaching for her, of fucking coming back for her (at least, in part), only to be disappointed. Betrayed, even. Just because of what other people think. Specially because of that lame reason.

But she wanted to call her. Oh, she wanted it so much.

It hadn't really stopped with Izzy coming back. Rather, it had gone back to normal: to what normal had meant after that party and before Izzy's disappearance, so, yeah, not really normal but okay. Having trouble sleeping, the occasional visiting of the memories of them together, the fear —so much fear— of being discovered. The new thing was the... fantasizing. Daydreaming. Of them together, far away from there. It usually started in off ways —Izzy would kidnap her or something like that. But she would then discover it was only to save her from something awful that was devouring Shaker Heights (or, more often, everyone turning into a zombie there). And they would go on to live in a place nobody knew them, and nobody cared, in the woods. And, also, the dreams hadn't stopped. Izzy would appear in them every now and then. Some of them were happy, others were tragic. But even when the dreams were tragic, she thanked her unconscious for bringing her back, close to her, even for a few moments, so real, and yet so private. Still a secret.

But anyway, back to "normal". Survivable.

Now April almost even hated Izzy. She had worried so much about her, and now she was here, all okay? To April, her suffering seemed disproportional to Izzy's suffering. She felt somewhat dumb. She shouldn't have let herself be carried away like that. She told her mom, for God's sake! She really wasn't thinking straight. And now it was a bit harder to convince her friends that she wasn't gay.

The hardest part was certainly liking boys. She really did not understand how the other girls did it. At one point she just picked a guy kinda like that. She had guessed she liked curls and big, clear eyes and one boy was similar to that, so she probably liked it. Him, I mean. Right? So she told her friends, and her friend told his friends, and just like that they were left them alone at a party. It was a little bit awkward at first, but he was actually nice. And when after a few parties and a few conversations he tried to kiss her she let him do it.

It wasn't bad... not really. But it wasn't good either. It was too much like... Lips? Tongue? Saliva? Mouths? She was surprised by the sheer materiality of it. It was truly what one would imagine kissing someone would feel like. Very wet and slippery.

She couldn't help but remember kissing Izzy. That was totally different. That was GOOD. Addictive. Soft. Almost like a reflex. It was so much more than just... mouths. It was her whole body and her whole mind and her whole heart. The present took away by desire. With this boy, instead, her mind would wander off during it —and there was so much saliva, yuck. But probably he just didn't know how to kiss properly, and Izzy did. Or maybe it was normal, it had to be this way: kissing boys was boring but it is what it is, and how she felt with Izzy was just wrong. Right?

So, yeah. It helped a lot to be seen with him. It was weird —he wanted to kiss way more often than her, because she never wanted to kiss— but people had finally stopped suspecting her.

But it hadn't solved the issue. The dreams were still there. The want, some nights, to call her, to send her a message. The missing her, the searching for her when she saw her siblings at school, the pain her chest every day she wasn't there. The dark, inescapable feeling that her friends would abandon her if they knew the truth about her. The dark, inescapable feeling that wanting to kiss Izzy was the truth about her. _Just ignore it,_ she though. _Ignore it long enough and you'll forget it,_ she tried to convince herself, and it was working to some extent. Until one day:

  
_Hey. We should talk._


	3. Chapter 3

_ “We went around without looking for each other, but knowing we went around to find each other.” _

_ Julio Cortázar _

_ Hey. We should talk. _

April stared at that message for a solid ten minutes, the light of her computer screen shining on her amidst the darkness of the room. She felt as if someone was squeezing her heart, and her consciousness wavered between focusing on that sensation on her chest and the words, the questions, the fears and the memories, all scrambled together.

Izzy. 

She was finally here. It wasn’t easy to grasp that the person behind those words was the same hazy figure that had haunted her these last few weeks. Perhaps because she wasn’t, she thought: Izzy was not the memories, nor the protagonist of all of the stories she had played out in her head or in her dreams. She wasn’t aware of them, actually. Izzy was a person that was sitting right now in a room, somewhere in that same city, and she wanted to talk to her. And April couldn’t be more horrified and excited at the same time. 

She was tempted to answer right away, but one moment she wanted to answer “Yes” and the other “Stop talking to me”, and either answer just made her want to throw up. So she turned off the computer and layed down in her bed, lights off, staring at the ceiling. She tried to think objectively about it but she could feel how her thoughts were all over the place, how suddenly her mind made the jump from saying “Yes” to being girlfriends again to being discovered by her mother to being thrown out of the house to being… dead? Who knows. Her brain could throw her in hell for all that mattered. And that was only one of her brain’s weird pirouettes: there were also flashes of them kissing, cuddling in the grass; Izzy’s smile, slow to appear but warming like winter’s sun. Definitely, all over the place.

She could answer tomorrow. Yes, she would answer tomorrow, after having slept on it. She put her pajamas and returned to bed, this time covering herself. Her chest was still tight, though, and her lungs felt like they had holes and wind just went through them, slightly scraping everything inside. She was pretty sure she was breathing faster too. So she tried to inhale deeper, and exhale deeper, and think about the test she had in two days, but it was a boring thing to think about, unlike Izzy, and she tried to think about what had happened in the My So-Called Life episode she had watched that day, but it seemed dull, unlike Izzy, and she tried to think about how mean her friend Amy could be sometimes and how she could talk to her about that, but that seemed fake, unlike Izzy. So she ended up thinking about Izzy. Until she fell asleep. 

She spent the entire next day thinking on what to answer, and that meant trying to guess what Izzy wanted to talk about. She had several theories. A big one —in the sense that she couldn’t help herself from thinking that was it, that was the reason, and dwelling upon it— was that she wanted to confront her and call her out for abandoning her, betraying her, and not having even called her. A part of her thought that this couldn’t be the reason, that Izzy wasn’t like that, but another part of her told her that it  _ had _ to be that, that she deserved that. That idea dominated her head for most of the morning classes. Another theory was that, you know, maybe she just wanted to talk. Catch up. Like normal friends do. It seemed atrociously simple considering the circumstances, but, you know, maybe she had been reading too much into the situation, she couldn’t tell. 

The thing that bothered her the most was the straightforwardness of the message.  _ We should talk? _ Talk about what! That’s the kind of thing boyfriends tell their girlfriends before breaking up. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows that means, at least, there will be some serious talking there. Not like last time, when she just wanted the dolls; that had been an easier decision to make, there had been a simple explanation for the meeting, an non-romantic excuse for her panic-ridden brain. 

She didn’t want to confront Izzy, not really. She didn’t want to hear all of the —very true and very deserved— things she had to say to her. Yet Izzy wasn’t coming to school. April hadn’t seen her for so long, and she just didn’t have it in her to ignore her message, to respond with a no. She also, just… needed, in such a primal way, to  _ see _ her being okay; after so much worry, just knowing she was wasn’t enough. She couldn’t deny that there was also a unrepentant curiosity hammering her head, demanding that the question “what does Izzy want from me?” be resolved. 

And the fear of being called out was not only a fear, she realized as she stood silent amongst her friends in the cafeteria. It was also a desire. She wanted to be called out: she  _ needed _ to be called out. Perhaps it was the only way she could finally leave it all behind her, and continue with her life, and sleep better, with a bit of luck. Forget all of the kisses and focus on the friendship mistakes she had made. Ask for forgiveness, and if it wasn’t given, move on. Yes, perhaps it was a good thing.

Plus, knowing that the last time they met nothing bad happened —nobody found out, Izzy didn’t blow the whistle— calmed her. 

That’s why, when she got home after school, she sprinted up the stairs, turned on her computer and typed:

_ Okay. At my house, after dinner? _

That’s why, when the answer came thirty minutes later, and it was:

_ No. In the park next to Noah’s house. Today, at 9. _

Worry broke through her chest like lightning, all of her flesh being drawn to the black hole that was the fear living right in the center of her body. 

All she could think about was how unpleasant the feeling was, and that she wanted to flee it; she needed that feeling out of her body, so she typed “No” and turned off the computer.

A beat. What she had done set in. She felt so stupid. Why couldn’t she meet the girl that had been her best friend for so long in a park? It was such a simple thing. And what had been a vibrating twirl of fear rapidly turned into a deep hum of sadness. Was she really abandoning Izzy again? After all she had been through? 

Now she wanted to take it back. But it would be so embarassing, Izzy would know she was dumb, childish, scared. She could even ask her why she sent the “No” in the first place, and April wouldn’t know how to answer, because she wouldn’t know what the true answer to that was, but she also knew she wouldn’t be able to successfully lie about it. 

She thoroughly weighted every option once, and then twice, and then multiple times. She felt tired, and confused, and sad, and ultimately worthless, and impotent, and paralyzed. She sat with those feelings, blunted, as the sun outside set and long shadows swept the room, and until her room all around her was dark, blue, ambiguous forms, and a cool breeze crossed the windows and landed in her cheeks. 

The door opened.

“Honey? Are you there?” Her mom flipped the switch and April’s eyes took some time to adjust. 

“Are you okay? Why wasn’t the light on?” 

April instantly regretted that her mom saw her like that.

“I had forgot. I’m just tired.” 

“Hum. Okay. Well, dinner is ready.”

“Okay.”

Her mom didn’t leave.

“You coming?” 

“Ah, sure.” April got up. “Mom?” 

“Hum?” 

“I have to go out after dinner. Noah has my notebook and I need it for tomorrow’s test.”

“Do you really need to? It’s a bit late.”

“It’s a very important test.”

April hadn’t been hungry but she ate anyway. She figured if on top of been seen seated doing nothing in the dark, she started skipping meals, the shrinks would be on her doorstep by the next day. Her mom had already said “You know you can tell me anything, right?” to her before going out. She couldn’t risk it. 

However, here she was. Walking on the streets of Shaker Heights, after dinner, entering the night, probably going to an empty park. She felt small, all alone in those streets, occasionally lit by tall lamps, the dark, big houses and their enormous lawns slowly being left behind, one by one. She regretted not taking the bike. Even though nothing bad happened in Shaker Heights, at least, not criminal-bad, she still felt scared, and there was something comforting about the speed of the bike. Luckily the park was not very far away, and it wasn’t that late.

She passed by Izzy’s house, or what remained of it. It was surreal, really: the carbon skeleton, sitting there, by the moonlight. A yellow “Do not cross” tape gently blowing in the wind from a pillar. So different from everything around it, and yet it spooked her slightly less than the big houses she was so used to. This had been stripped down of every wall, every lie, every cunning intention. It was so bare she almost felt sorry for it, like it was in dire need of protection and she could give it to it. 

She arrived to the park. It was medium sized, populated by a lot of trees (their foliage would serve to prevent them from being seen from the windows, she though), and it had a playground that was illuminated by a lonely pole with a stark light. There was nobody to be seen.

_ Only Izzy would choose such a scary place to meet _ , she thought as she headed towards the swing. She had left the house at a quarter to nine, so it was possible that she wasn’t there yet. It could also, obviously, be that she wouldn’t come, because she had told her that she wouldn’t go. 

She didn’t know why she had decided to come anyway. It was not like it had been a rational decision: she made it in a split second after what felt like hours of rumination. However, she couldn’t deny that to be outside, searching for Izzy while at the same time knowing that she wouldn’t be there just felt… right. Like finally her actions, her outside world was in agreement with her inside world: searching for Izzy without the risk of actually meeting her.

But that also meant that she didn’t felt ready to see her, not really. Just the thought of it made her heart jump and ache.  _ What if she really does come here? _ she asked herself, and the fear of that happening fused with the overall fear of being in a playground at night and with the fear of having made a dumb decision waiting for someone that wouldn't come and she was ready to go when…

A figure. A person walking down the street in front of her. A short person, just minding their business. And then that person turns their head towards her, and stops dead in their tracks. They stay like that for a while, and then they come towards her. April’s heart is beating really fast, painfully so, almost in a crescendo as the person approaches the light.

Izzy. 

She’s standing in front of her, dressed in black with her military green jacket and combat boots. She doesn’t look surprised, not really, just serious with a hint of sadness, her big eyes slightly more open than usual.

“You came.”

April’s chest is killing her, her heart beating, furious, painfully so, and she’s pretty sure her palms are sweating too. 

“Yeah.”

There’s a silence as they look at each other for the first time in weeks, Izzy’s gaze slightly unfocused, and April’s expression —she’s pretty sure— is an apprehensive one. Then Izzy walks up and sits in the swing next to her. 

“I’m sorry about that. About saying no, I mean,” April says.

“It’s okay,” she answers quietly, reassuringly. She does so looking at her feet, then away, at something in the distance. April breathes, and then looks at her: she’s gently swinging, and the stark lighting mostly illuminates the half of her face she can’t see, but it seems to her she has a calm expression, like she’s enjoying the silence. 

April’s heart is still pounding on her chest, pressing her to do something, to start apologizing, asking questions, hell, even running, but she can’t help to feel the mismatch between her emotions and Izzy’s vibe. So she doesn’t, she looks away too, changes the grip on the swing chain, tries to breathe. She waits for Izzy to say something, but she doesn’t. There’s only the squeaking of the swing.

“I didn’t expect you to come, to be honest”, April says, finally. 

“Yeah? Me neither.” She blew hair through her nose and pressed her lips in a smile, like a quiet chuckle. 

“No?”

“No. I was just taking a walk.” She swings a bit. “Taking my mind off things. I like the streets at night.” She stops and turns to take a quick look at April. “And then I saw you here.” 

“Makes sense. The taking a walk part, though. Shaker Heights at night freaks me out.” 

Izzy smiles.

“Well, you’re scared by a lot of things,” she says, almost to herself. 

April wonders if she meant something by that. “I guess.” So probably mentioning the spookiness of the meetup spot was bad idea. 

There’s that silence again. However, the easiness Izzy gives off is contagious, and April doesn’t feel that rushed to say something. There’s a sense of intimacy that makes her feel… calm. Safe. Like everything is okay just because she’s there, just because she’s herself. 

Just recently it had struck April that Izzy never said anything about her lie. She never protested. When she accused her of molesting her, she just left the party. She never told anyone at school they had been together. She could’ve. It would had been fair. April knows she would’ve done it in her place. But Izzy didn’t. April was tempted to believe she didn’t because people wouldn’t believe her, but not only there was a ton of people who would’ve told the truth anyway, she knew in her heart that that wasn’t the reason Izzy had kept quiet. Maybe that was the reason she felt so calm there, with her. 

And so she remembered why she was there. 

“Izzy?”

“Yes?”

April looks at the ground ahead of her, how the tiny rocks in the gravel shine on one side and cast tiny shadows on the other. 

“I’m sorry.” That seems to get Izzy’s attention, and she looks up. April can’t muster the courage to look into her eyes though. “About everything.” 

Izzy looks down again, doesn’t reply for a while. 

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?” Now April is looking at her.

Izzy changes position, and sighs. 

“I don’t know,” she says. “I guess I just don’t believe you.”

April’s heart sank, like when you’re in an elevator that’s going down too quickly. Only this time, it was even more painful.

She opened her mouth, wanting to ask why, but she stops, because she knows. She knows why. She crouches and rests her elbows on her thighs, making herself small, and covering her mouth with her left hand palm. She looks at Izzy again, and she feels sad. She feels it’s unfair, even though she knows it isn’t. She wonders if all of the sadness that she had caused Izzy was just passed onto her, onto April, with those few words.

“And it’s okay,” Izzy said, still looking away. And now that got April’s attention. She straightened and looked at her. “I get it now. That you don’t want to be, you know, girlfriends.” Izzy continued. “And I’m okay with it.” April scrutinized her face, the half-lit part she could see, trying to understand what was happening. Was this… a breakup? A relationship breakup? A friendship breakup? Was this Izzy’s way of saying they should part ways, live their own lives, because she was fed up of her? Regardless, a knot formed in her stomach, and it could only be that her lungs had suddenly become smaller, because it took twice the effort to get the air in, it almost hurt. 

Izzy turned to look at April again, a bittersweet, soft smile across her face. “That’s why I wanted to meet. To…” she paused as she searched for the right word, the pupil of her eye traveling from the upper left corner to the right one, “ _ offer _ , being just friends again, if you’d like.” Izzy stared into her eyes.

And April could finally see the Izzy she knew: the insecurities on Izzy’s face, the slightest raise of the eyebrow, the sweet, soft smile, and how she was searching for signs of complicity, reacting almost instantaneously to April’s expression, just like that night, at that party, when the bottle ended up pointing at her.

And, because her heart had already ached at the thought of Izzy doubting that she wanted to be friends with her, April just gave in. She missed Izzy’s so much. She smiled. 

“Of course. I’d love to.” They looked at each other, smiling. April stared into Izzy eyes, and then shyly looked away, as Izzy did, and so she would look again, until the cycle repeated itself one too many times, and they just laughed.

April felt warm inside, almost euphoric, like the —previously scarce— air in her lungs had warmed up just enough to pull her out flying into the sky. Izzy let out a sight, this time of relief, and looked ahead, still smiling, now smiling to herself. Things were gonna be fine.

“Nice,” Izzy said after a while. She swang a little, letting the feeling linger. There was another silence, but it was one of contentment, with the occasional glancing at each other. 

“I have  _ so _ much to tell you,” Izzy continued. 

“Yeah, I guessed,” April said, emphasizing the beginning of each word, as if to make it clear it was obvious. They both laughed. 

“Well, yes.” She said with a smile. Then, she made the almost surprised face one does when one remembers something. “Oh, the first thing, before I forget. It’s what made me send you that message, actually.” As she said this, she turned and lifted her left leg over the swing seat, placing it on the other side, and rested her back on the chain, now facing April.   
“Yeah? What?” April asked as she did the same movement: they were now facing each other.

“I’m not going back to school”, Izzy said, proud. “I mean, not back to Shaker Heights’ high school. I have officially transferred to ‘Cleveland School of the Arts’”. She said the last name making a sweeping motion with her right hand, and the shadow that gesture provoked also swept April. 

It took some time for April to answer. “What?” The euphoric feeling faded even quicker than it had popped up, all of it going down, getting buried in the ground beneath. April couldn’t really hide her disappointment, even if disappointment was only one of the many feelings going through her at that moment. It didn’t help that now her face was entirely lit by the pole.

“You don’t like it?” Izzy asked, looking genuinely confused. 

“No, I mean, I don’t know. Do you?” she quickly corrected herself, realizing that her reaction was not the appropriate one.

“Yeah, of course! It was my idea. I’m just surprised you’re not hyped up too.”

“Well, if you’re happy, then I’m happy too.” She wanted to kick herself in the face, but she didn’t know what to say, so she just said what she though. “I just had missed you at school, that’s all. I had been expecting you to come back.” And then, “It’s weird thinking you’re never going to be there again.”

“Really?” Izzy switched her weight to her back. “I had thought you’d like it. You know, because you wouldn’t have to worry about what the kids at school think and all that, because they won’t see us together.” April looked at Izzy again.  _ So really thinks that, _ she thought.  _ And she has every reason to do so _ , she realized. At that exact moment, April felt like she wanted the entire world to see them together. 

It only lasted a second. 

Izzy took a pause and looked away before saying the next phrase, and her tone was different. “Besides, it’s not like we ever hanged out at school anyway.”

_ Ouch. _ April felt an intense need to tell her how much she had missed her, how she searched for her everyday when she saw her siblings, how she had defended her. But Izzy looked at her, and April just looked away, to the ground. She couldn’t.

So there was just silence between them.

“You’re right. I’m sorry for having reacted like that,” April said. She looked at Izzy, trying to smile. “Besides, Cleveland School of the Arts sounds just like your kind of place.” 

Izzy looked at her. “I know, right?” They smiled again. “I’m just pissed I hadn’t heard of it before.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be great. You’ll be happy.” April’s tone was almost nostalgic. “And we’ll hang out in other places. It’ll be nice.” The worst part, April realized as she said that, was that she  _ did _ feel relieved not having to worry about what people from school thought, allowing what they had to be just between them. Why should other people know? Even if now they were only friends, there was something about their friendship that seemed so precious, so pure to her still, that she preferred it to be a secret. “Good timing too. I was just starting to get bored of all my friends at school.”

Izzy raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say a thing. 

“Oh, and Izzy!” She had an idea on how to get the conversation back on track. “I heard you made up a trap and tied up a guy, is it true?”

Izzy chuckled. April just stared at her, half-smiling.

“I can’t believe people bought that story,” Izzy said, with the biggest smile on her face.

“Well, I don’t know!” April defended herself, embarrassed. “Seems like the kind of stuff you would do.”   
“Oh, does it?” asked Izzy, half joking, half defiant. “I’m the kind of person who would tie up a guy?” She got up and gestured towards herself. “Seriously, me? I’m like barely four feet!” She had that sweet, slightly mischievous smile.

April started laughing, and then the both did.

“Okay, okay!” April said after a while. “Sorry for believing you were a badass. I can see now I was badly mistaken.” She continued to let out some few, quieter chuckles, as she regained her breath.    
Then, she realized Izzy didn’t answer. April looked at her and she was looking away, pensive. “Hey, everything okay? It was a joke.”

Izzy said something, but it was too low for her to understand.

“What?”

“I said it wasn’t. It’s the truth.” 

April’s heart broke.

“No, why? Come on, you’re so cool!” Izzy kept silent. “You wrote that thing on your forehead in the concert, you did the thing with the dolls, I mean, who does that?” 

“Yeah but… you know, there’s a reason I invented that story,” she said. She bit her lip and looked at April, searching for reassurance. April gently smiled to her. “People asked me what I did out there, and why I run away, and I just couldn’t tell them, I couldn’t.” Izzy started playing with her hands, and looking at them.

“It’s okay. They don’t need to know,” April said. 

“But that’s not it. I don’t care if they know or not. I just don’t want anyone to know. It was so awful.” Now April switched her weight and approached Izzy, who now looked at her with barely teary eyes, and so she took her hand. “It was so awful, from the moment Mia left Shaker Heights and left me all alone here, and all of the awful things my mom said, April, and then in the bus, I thought maybe I was finally going to be free, happy,” her voice started breaking, “but then I left the bus and I had no money, and nowhere to sleep, and I slept on the street, but I woke up to a weird guy coming towards me, and so I ran, but nobody wanted to help me,” and she her tone was getting high-pitched, and she was talking faster, between loud short breaths, “and I had to walk all night, and there was no sign of Mia and I was so tired, and when I found a policeman I thought he would help me, but he just looked at me like I was disgusting and then I…” And now April was hugging her. 

“Hey, you’re okay now, Izzy,” she said, as she caressed the hair on the back of her head, and hugged her even tighter. She felt how Izzy let herself go and started crying. 

“I was just waiting for an excuse to come back,” Izzy blurted out. “I’m not a badass. I’m worthless.”

“Hey. Hey, you’re not worthless, you’re a badass. You’re the bravest person I know. Nobody should have to go through that.” 

Izzy just kept crying, and April said “It’s okay” over and over again.

“I’m going to leave you jacket all wet,” Izzy whispered.

April chuckled. “That’s okay too. I don’t mind. I’m here.”

They stayed like that for a while, as Izzy calmed down. April, her heart aching, didn’t know if to ask more about what had happened, but she assumed that she would’ve continued if she wanted to. And who was this Mia person? What it a new girlfriend? So she just kept holding Izzy really tight, she didn’t want to let her go. She had missed her so much that now that she was here, between her arms, safe at least, she could finally breathe.

Izzy stopped crying and pulled her head out of that nook between April’s head and her shoulder. She snorted and laughed at herself, and April did too. April pulled the hair out of Izzy’s face and put it behind her ears, and she wiped her tears with her thumb too. 

“I’m sorry,” Izzy said. 

“Sorry for what?” 

“For crying all over you. I don’t know what happened to me.”

“Oh don’t you dare. I’m just happy that you’re safe now. That…” she paused. “That you’re here. I had missed you,” she said.

“Me too,” replied Izzy, with that smile, so sweet, with puffy eyes and a red nose because of all the crying, and she felt so small and cozy right next to her, and she was so close to her she could see every individual hair on her eyebrows, and April could only think she could never allow something bad happening to her again.

And then April looked at Izzy’s smile one more time and her lips looked so soft and she remembered all of the kisses and how good they felt and she leaned in and…

Izzy got up suddenly. April stayed her, her knees on the ground next to the swing seat.

She cleared her throat. “I should leave.”

April felt chilly as the warmth of the places Izzy had been evaporated onto the night.

“My family was worried about me going out at night. Understandably,” Izzy continued. “I should go back now.”

April got up too, albeit more slowly and awkwardly. 

“Oh, yeah. Sure,” she said.  _ What did just happen? _

“It was nice seeing you. We should do this again. Meet.”

“Definitely.”

She started leaving, but she stopped.

“And… April?” 

“Yes?” 

“Was it true that you told your mom? About us?” 

April blushed remembering everything that she told her. “Yeah.” 

“And how’d she react?” 

“Not good. She pretends it didn’t happen.” 

“Oh. That sucks.” She hesitated for a bit. “I also told my mom.” 

“Really? And?” 

“She reacted awful at first, but now, I think she’s just ignoring it too?” 

“Oh. So both of our parents know.” 

“Yeah.¨ A pause, a shadow of doubt. “It’s a shame it’s only after the facts.”

“Yeah.”

Izzy stood there for a while, thinking. 

“Well, see you. Next week?” 

“Sure.”

And she left.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this chapter took so long, there was just too much happening in my life. It may mean that next chapter will take some time too, even if I hope not as much as this one, or it may not. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and don't hesitate to make suggestions :)

Izzy really tried to avoid making too much sound while opening the door, but as soon as she stepped foot inside, the sight of her mother, eyes set on her and arms crossed, let her know that she had failed. 

“Where had you been?”, she asked. She was in her nightgown. 

“Taking a walk. Like I said I would.” Izzy closed the door behind her, leaned on it.

Elena huffed in incredulity.

“This late? Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

Izzy smirked. “I forgive you,” she said lightly. She crossed the living room and already had her arm on the knob of the door to her room. “Izzy”. Her mom had said Izzy. Not Isabelle or any other name. She stopped. It wasn’t enough to make her around, though. 

Elena walked towards her, lifted her arm to touch her daughter’s shoulder, paused mid-air, and dropped it. “Izzy,” she said again, the tone softened down, almost pleading. “I’m just worried about you. It’s not an attack.”

Izzy looked at her hand on the knob. “I don’t want to lose you again,” Elena continued, a slight break in her voice.

“I know.” She paused. “I’m sorry,” she forced herself to say. 

“Don’t worry.” Elena sighted, smiled, and then, “So, where were you?”

Izzy turned her head and locked eyes with her mother.

“Walking.” 

And then she went into her room. The one she now had to share with Lexie. Elena felt the urge to follow her and ask her who she thought she was, and remind her she was her mother, and ground her for a week, but she didn’t. As Dr. Ingraham had pointed out to her, not only did it sour their relationship, it simply didn’t work. Plus, she felt ashamed at doing that in front of Lexie after everything that had happened. She would have to figure out other ways to make sure Izzy wasn’t putting herself in danger. (Or the family’s name in danger either, it wouldn’t hurt to know.)

“Hey,” said Moody, as he dropped down next to her on the couch. They were in their new living room, which was of course way smaller than they were used too. 

“Hey,” Izzy answered. She was cutting down magazines for a project.

“So… Mom wanted to talk to me in the morning,” he said. “She wanted me to figure out what you were doing yesterday. I guess she didn’t want me to tell you that she did, but, you know… not my kind of thing.”

Izzy rolled her eyes. 

“Urgh, it doesn’t surprise me really.”

“The thing is, I didn’t tell her no.” Izzy raised an eyebrow. “I told her I would ask you, and I would tell her if it was, well, concerning or not.” He added, “Without telling her what it was, of course.”

Izzy frowned. “Really? Why?” 

Moody turned to her, putting his entire right leg, bended, on the couch. “Because I get it, Izzy, and you would too if you had seen us while you were gone. She’s just worried, and I couldn’t say no.”

“Why don’t you just lie to her then? Tell her I was doing perfectly acceptable stuff?”

“For the same reason I’m not buying into her little spies game. I’m just tired of all the lies. And I think you are too.”

Izzy sighted. She knew really well why she didn’t want to tell Elena about her meeting with April, and she stood by that choice, but she couldn’t come up with good reasons not to tell Moody. Her pride wanted to keep her mom out of her life at all costs, but she had been a little better lately, and it would be better to calm her than to push her into snooping into her stuff.

“Okay,” she said, after a while. She put her scissor and magazines on the coffee table in front of her. 

“Okay,” Moody repeated with a smile. “So, where were you?”

Izzy still threw a doubtful stare at him. “In the park close to Noah’s house.”

“All alone?”, Moody asked, more out of surprise than doubt.

“No.” Moody raised both eyebrows. Izzy looked away, and said in a low voice, “I was with April.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yep,” Izzy said, resigned.

A short silence followed.

“Now you know why I didn’t want to tell mom.”

“Yeah.” Another silence. “Are you back together?”

“Oh, no.” If she’d not been lying to herself, she would’ve added “I wish”. “We’re not.”

“No? Then why did you meet?” 

“I don’t know.” Moody didn’t say anything. “I guess I wanted to see her.”

“...and tell her how much of a bitch she was to you and how you never wanted to see her again, I hope?” 

Izzy looked at him in disapproval. 

“Actually, I proposed we could be friends. Again.”

“Why?”, he asked, taking his time on the  _ y _ . “She doesn’t deserve you! She is an  _ awful _ friend.”

“Yeah, I know. I won’t get my hopes up this time. I just enjoy her company, and I will continue to enjoy it. That’s all.”

“I don’t think she deserves your forgiveness.”

“Oh, me neither. This is not about her. This is about me. It’s pure egoism.”

Later, when she was doing the final touches on her art project (a dark collage on women’s bodies) Moody snooped in.

“You’re doing a  _ Trip _ , aren’t you?”

“What?”

“A  _ Trip _ . I said that was what you’re doing with April.”

Izzy squinted. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“You know, ignoring a girl you like to make her like you. That’s what you’re doing.”

“What? No, I’m not. And I can’t believe Trip does that. Well, on second thought, it doesn’t surprise me that much.”

“Oh, you don’t have to lie to me, Izzy. I understand. It’s a desperate move, and a dumb one considering April’s… doubtful loyalty, but I understand.”

“Look, Moody. I really am not the kind to play mind games with people. That’s not what I’m doing with April, end of story.”

“If you say so.”

Even if it wasn’t Izzy’s original idea, she now thought there were more than one positive outcome to what she was doing (the original one being, quite simply, having April as a friend but not trusting her), and there was no harm in that. That being said, she liked the idea of April liking her again, but she really didn’t think they could be a thing anymore. April had shown her she wasn’t ready. 

“So, did you do what I said?” Elena asked in a murmur. 

“No. I did as I said,” Moody answered, slightly tired.

“That doesn’t matter,” Elena said, dismissing it with her hand. 

She had asked Moody to accompany her to buy groceries, and Elena had made the question as soon as they were alone in the car.

“So?”

“It’s okay, mom. Izzy is in no danger.”

“Really?” Elena had a hard time believing it.. She turned her head away from the road to look at Moody for a second, trying to figure out if he was lying. “Then why didn’t she tell me?”

“She has her reasons.”

“And what reasons would that be?”

“The point of saying ‘she has her reasons’, mom, is to not tell you what those reasons are.”

“I know, Moody. I just don’t understand. What could she be doing at 9 pm outside that isn’t dangerous but she also can’t tell me? I think it’s fair that I’m concerned.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be, mom. Believe me, she isn’t putting herself in danger, and she has a right to her privacy.”

Elena stopped asking. They talked about other things, got to the supermarket and bought groceries for the week. As they were taking things out of the shopping car and putting them in the trunk, she stopped.

“I really don’t understand, Moody.”

“What?”

“Why Izzy can’t tell me. Why  _ you _ can’t tell me. Is it a surprise?”

“No.” Moody continued putting the remaining bags in the trunk. “Stop asking.”

“Is it something I wouldn’t approve of?”

“Mom. Stop.” He closed the trunk. 

“Is she afraid of my response?” He moved towards the door.

“Look, mom. It’s just something you have not reacted well to in the past. That’s all. Now, could you open the door, please?”

Elena did it and sat in the driver’s seat. She had an idea as she started the engine.

“Is it April?” 

“No,” Moody quickly blurted. 

She looked at him. He had sounded decisive, but there was a hint of guilt in his eyes. She knew.

“Can we go now?”

It’s funny, because mothers often say they would do anything for their kids. They would die for their kids. Elena knew she would die for her kids, if she had to. She had tried to take the fall for the whole burning of the house affair, before her husband decided it was best to try a whole different strategy. But then, why was this, with Izzy, so hard? Why was it easier for her to picture herself dying in order to save Izzy, than to actually accept her daughter as she was?

Elena knew, she always knew, that some of it had to do with the fact that Izzy, her fourth child, was an unplanned one. Her coming into the family had been one of the worst periods of her life. She knew it wasn’t fair to her, that Izzy hadn’t planned to ruin her life (and she hadn’t ruined her life, not really), but she still felt that rage, deep down.

She also felt shame, so much shame. What kind of mother doesn’t love their child unconditionally? What kind of mother has not only favourites, but least favourites? That had contributed to the whole affair being repressed.

That was, of course, until Dr. Ingraham. And maybe also due to their children burning down their house, and Mia and Pearl putting her whole life upside down, giving her an inescapable reason to take a good look at herself. 

She didn’t tell Dr. Ingraham right away, of course, about the resentment she felt towards Izzy. Heck, she didn’t even tell her: it just happened, after many hours of conversation. She hinted at it, and the therapist asked some questions, and all of a sudden it all came up, tears were shed, and she felt like a whole new woman. But things that were buried, deep down, don’t change from one day to the other, the doctor kept telling her. And she was right.

She couldn’t help but feel Izzy was at fault. She  _ was _ making life more difficult for her, it was one of her objectives in life. “That’s normal for a teenager,” Dr. Ingraham would say. “It has nothing to do with you.” But why didn't the others?  _ Why her? _

Then came another hell of a ride. “What were you like as a teenager, Elena?”. Or: “How was your mom with you?”. The worst thing was that, even if it was a cliché, it worked with her. So much. 

She couldn’t help but wonder, too, if all of this gay thing was also a way of bothering her. If it wasn’t a lie, a way of calling attention, of upsetting her. “Isn’t that what you want to believe, though?” Elena didn’t understand the question. “Isn’t it easier, for you, if being gay isn’t the truth about you daughter?”  _ Ouch. _ At those times she remembered why she hadn’t gone to a therapist before. It was nicer thinking everything was okay, even if it wasn’t.

She had so much trouble putting it all into practice though. She would end the private sessions with the doctor ready to hug her daughter and ask for forgiveness for all of the things she had done, however, just seeing the disinterested look Izzy gave her when she came back made it all go away. Pride walled her up in no time. So much, in fact, Dr. Ingraham couldn’t even help her in the family sessions.

_ But now I have to. _

She walked into Izzy’s and Lexie’s room, her heart pounding. She would’ve preferred to talk to Izzy alone, but if she had learned anything the night her house was burned down by her three non problematic kids, it was that they weren’t really non problematic, just late bloomers.

Both of their daughters were in their respective bed. They looked at her and sensed there was something going on. 

“Izzy, Lexie, can we talk?” 

“Sure,” Lexie said. 

Elena took a quick glance at Izzy, who hadn’t responded, and sat down on the border of her bed. Izzy didn’t move her legs to give her more space.

She took a deep breath, and realised with surprise that she felt scared. She had never felt scared to talk to her children before. 

“Izzy. Lexie.” She looked at them as she said their names. “I owe you both an apology.”

Izzy had a puzzled look on her face. Lexie said “Okay?”. 

Elena pressed her lips. She turned her face towards her older daughter. “Lexie. I’m sorry I forced you to be a perfect girl. To be a mini-me. I’m sorry I never stopped to think about what you might like, who you might be, really, and that I never gave you the space to discover that—”

“Mom, it’s not like that,” Lexie said.

“Let me finish. I wanted to say that I’m especially sorry that I failed so much as a mother that you didn’t trust me to help you with your… Well, with your abortion. I failed so much that you were actually right, that when you did tell me I dismissed it, I denied it, and I regret having done that every day that has passed since that night.”

There was a pause. 

“And it  _ is _ like that, Lexie. At least it was.”

Lexie looked into her mother’s eyes, and then down. She didn’t know what to say, and she felt a slight embarrasment talking about her abortion with her mother. 

“And I want you to know that I’m trying to change. That you can trust me now. That you don’t need to do anything for me, or to please me, because I’m already so happy with who you are right now, and I only want you to be happy too.” Elena smiled. “I love you.”

“Thanks, mom.” Lexie was in a quiet shock. “You didn’t need to apologize for all of those things, really. Just about that one thing.” 

Elena smiled. She was, indeed, easier to work with. “Honey, I did need to.”

She turned around. 

“And now, Izzy.”

She had her arms crossed on top of the covers and looked defiant. 

“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” she said.

Elena frowned. But she breathed again. She began talking while looking down. 

“I’m sorry, Izzy.” Truth was, she wasn’t exactly sure of what she had to be sorry about, just that it was all of it. “I… I have not been the mother that you need. That you deserve.”

She looked up.

“No, strike that. I haven’t even been a mother to you, Izzy. I haven’t confronted you, protected you from the outside world.”  _ I haven’t been able to see how special you are. _ “I haven’t made you feel special.”  _ I haven’t been able to love you as I should’ve. _ “I haven’t made you feel loved.”  _ I haven’t liked who you are when you’re yourself.  _ “I haven’t made you feel like you can be yourself.” Filtering her own thoughts was making her horrified at them. Was it really how she felt? It couldn’t be. 

Izzy’s expression was now harder to read.

“You’re forgetting something.”

“What?”

“That you took away the person that was more of a mother to me that you ever were.”

The silence. The crack that slowly parted her heart. 

“Izzy,” her sister rebuked. 

Elena looked down. Now she understood that all of that fear was justified. After that brief moment of pain, she wanted to scream in rage, to scold Izzy.  _ Jealousy. _ Had Dr. Ingraham finally gotten into her mind?

“You don’t get to be a shit mom for years and then say some pretty words and that’s it.”

A way out.

“I know. This isn’t only words, Izzy. This is me trying to change.” She looked at her. “That’s why I agreed to you going into that school.” Her daughter rolled her eyes. Elena paused. She was going to have to say it. “That’s why I accept you if you are…  _ gay. _ ” She said the last word in a whisper.

Izzy opened her eyes. For a moment, she wanted to give her mom a break.

“Took you long enough.” At this point, she knew she was acting out of pride, but she couldn’t help herself. 

Elena put her palms in her thighs, inhaled, and got up. She wondered if she had anger management issues too, or if it was normal to get fits of rage when talking to a teenager.

“I know. I’m going to make it up to you.”

She approached her, bent down, and kissed her on the forehead. Then, she did the same with Lexie, and she paused at the door frame, her hand on the switch. 

“I love you too, Izzy.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay again T.T

_ “What?” _

_ “Uh?” _

_ “What?” April asked again, dragging the ‘a’, amused.  _

_ “What what?” Izzy said, coming into her senses. They were watching Home Alone lying on their stomachs, parallel to one another. Or at least April was watching it; Izzy was looking at April.  _

_ “Why were you looking at me like that?” She had a smile on her lips and a raised eyebrow.  _

_ “Like what?” Izzy responded, starting to blush. She had thought it had been an excellent idea to give into her craving just then: the room was dark except for the light coming from the TV, and April was distracted by the movie. But no.  _

_ April pushed her with her shoulder. “You know how.”  _

_ “I was just…” How could she explain why she was watching her? “I was just watching the movie,” Izzy said, turning her face away and pointing at it with her chin. _

_ “No you weren’t.” The tone was still playful; that was probably the only reason why Izzy hadn’t run to the mountains in embarrassment just yet.  _

_ “Yes I was.” _

_ “Okay, then what was the trap the bad guys fell in before this one?”  _

_ Even though April was teasing, Izzy’s eyes went wide. She looked at the TV, then at April, then at the TV again, and April laughed. Izzy blushed again, and fixed her gaze at the screen. After a while she said: _

_ “Shh, you’re not letting me see the movie.”  _

_ April chuckled, then stared at Izzy. Her whole head was turned, so there was no way Izzy didn’t know she was staring. She did it for a while, expecting her to turn her head and look at her too, or to say something, but she didn’t. Yet she continued staring, her gaze drifting to Izzy’s bushy eyebrows or her round, cute nose, or that little, pronounced groove between her nose and her lips, and then back to her overly expressive (and at the moment timid) eyes; April didn’t know why, but she wasn’t going to let this go. She felt her own breathing slow down, and she put a hand on Izzy’s shoulder. _

_ “Why were you looking at me like that?” she whispered.  _

_ Izzy finally turned her head, still with a smudge of panic in her eyes. April smiled softly and drew circles with her thumb on Izzy’s shoulder.  _

_ Izzy searched for something on April’s expresion. “I don’t know?” she said after a while.  _

_ “Try.”  _

_ Izzy closed her eyes and sighed. She wondered why April was doing that, and even if her conscious brain was telling her she should shut up, she couldn’t help but feel hopeful. She bent her head, her breathing quickening.  _

_ “I guess it was because…” She trailed off. _

_ “Because?” _

_ “Because you are very… beautiful.” She said the last word very low, delicately, but also with the absurd hope that April wouldn’t hear.  _

_ April chuckled. “It’s okay, Izzy.”  _

_ Izzy looked up without moving her head. “It is?”  _

_ “Yeah.” A pause. April started blushing too. “It’s sweet, actually.”  _

_ Izzy grinned, then looked into her eyes. The silence was buzzing around them. April looked unbelievably cute, her big, blue eyes diaphanous, her lips long, the gentle burgundy color tinting her cheeks like watercolor. She looked expectant, and she tucked her hair back in her ear, like she did when something caught her attention. But what did it for Izzy was that April sucked her lower lip in, and then released it.  _

_ Izzy leaned in slowly, fearing that at any time April would pull away. But as she came closer, she saw April close her eyes, and so she did the same, and brushed her lips in a quick peck. She could only register that her lips were soft, and fresh, and apparently electrically charged, then pulled away.  _

_ They looked at each other for a second, eyes wide open, pupils big and dark, and then they laughed, feeling awkward. It could have ended there, but when they stopped laughing, April stared into Izzy’s eyes again, her expression serious, and put her hand on Izzy’s neck to pull her in for another kiss.  _

  
  


“This is so amazing,” April said as she looked around the van. Izzy wanted to laugh: she was way too tall for such a small place, and it reminded her of that scene in Alice in Wonderland when she grows too big for the room she’s in. “Did you do this?”

“Oh, no, I wish. This is courtesy of Moody.” Izzy wasn’t at imminent risk of hitting her head on the roof like April, but she still sat down quickly. She had already checked the place. 

“Seriously? I wouldn’t have expected him to make this sort of thing. He looks so...” 

“Innocent? Boring?” Izzy offered. “Yeah. I guess he’s sweet but that doesn’t keep him from being interesting too.” She smiled and asked with a playful voice, “Will you sit down or are you practicing for a role in the hunchback of Notre Dame?” 

April chuckled and then looked at her. Right next to her there was what seemed like a very cozy place, but she still didn’t feel comfortable being so close to her, especially in such an intimate space. Here, they were truly alone. She started searching for another place; Izzy seemed to have picked up on what went through her mind, because she quickly pointed at a seat in front of her.

“You can sit there if you want. I think there’s enough space for your legs.”

“Just for my legs?” April asked as she motioned to sit on the spot. 

Izzy smiled. “Yes. Sadly we’re cutting expenses and, if forced to choose, your legs obviously are more important. I’m sorry if this is difficult to hear, April’s head and torso. And arms.”

April chuckled. “Is that so?” Izzy was grinning. April wanted to continue the banter, but she didn’t quite know what to say. She was tempted to say: “And here I thought you liked me for my brilliant conversation” or “I didn’t pin you down as an objectifier of women, Izzy Stevenson” or maybe “Sadly, I would be dead if that were to happen” but she was afraid of where the first ones might lead and the last one was lame and boring and as the brief seconds in which she weighted her options passed she saw Izzy’s smile starting to fade and so she finally settled on “Interesting.” By then the brunette’s grin was long gone and a mildly uncomfortable silence was starting to set. 

As it went on she started fearing Izzy would notice, or even voice her fears, and even worse, apologize for making her legs the point of conversation, and so she blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “So how are you?” 

Izzy smiled again. “Great actually, and you?”

_ Weird. _ “Good.” She made a brief pause. She had to avoid making the conversation awkward at all costs. “So great, hum? Tell me about it.”

Izzy gave her a cocky look, and April could tell she was wondering if she should give free pass to her need to talk about everything even if that meant monopolizing the conversation. “Seriously, tell me everything. I want to hear it all.”

The smile grew bigger, and it was obvious to April that it wasn’t even conscious. “Okay, so, remember when I told you I was going to a new school last time we met?” 

April nodded. That was almost a month ago, but she had replayed the conversation so many times in her head she remembered every detail. “And it seemed like exactly your kind of place?”

“Yes. Well, I’m going there now, and it’s  _ amazing _ .” Izzy shifted in her seat. “We have a bunch of classes about art, the teachers are so cool and inspiring, the building is full of murals and sculptures made by the students, and the other kids are so interesting and different from what I was used to.” She put her fingers next to her mouth for a second, almost covering it. “Don’t get me wrong, at first it was weird. I didn’t know anyone and the boy who was supposed to show me around and introduce me to people the first day was actually kind of rude. Like those indifferent types. And so the first days I was a bit lonely and like disappointed but then I met a girl named Blair and she introduced me to her friends and they were so nice and cool and I just love hanging out with them.”

April raised an eyebrow. “Wow. That’s so cool. How did you two meet?” She had guessed the new school was what had kept her so busy but she hadn’t really thought it could be because she could have new friends now. She even felt a tad of… jealousy?

Izzy blushed a little. “She saw a collage I did in class.”

“A collage? About what?”

“About… shallowness, I guess? Fakeness? I took lips and symbols of having money and adorned them like holy things. I also wrote some stuff in there, and drew a bit. The teacher liked it, I was so thrilled. And then Blair asked me about it and we hit it off.” 

April felt weird. “Hum. And so, are the people there like, that different? From people in Shaker Heights?”  _ Do you like them more?  _

“Oh,  _ so _ different. You wouldn’t believe it. There’s some people with piercings and dyed hair and stuff like that in my class already, and they aren’t outcasts or anything, they’re actually nice.” Izzy was beaming with joy as she spoke, and April couldn’t help but feel immensely happy too. “And everyone cares about art, of course. And they like to talk about it, it’s so nice, they have favourite artists I had never heard of and they have projects and ideas and opinions. There’s a bunch of kids that look like they’re on the moon the whole time and others that say they want to ‘go with the flow’.” Izzy moved both her arms in a wave caricaturing them and April chuckled. Her fear of being replaced subsided. “There’s other kids who are absolutely full of themselves and will jump at any chance of telling you about the museums they went to or make you feel bad because you don’t know who some obscure Renaissance artist is.” April rolled her eyes in empathy. “There are a bunch of more quiet kids too. But specially, there’s so many talented people there.” She paused. “It’s kind of intimidating.”

“Intimidating, why?” It seemed strange to her that people with talent would be intimidating, and not the ones with piercings. 

“April, there’s kids out there that are the next Da Vinci, I swear. I have zero talent compared to them, I don’t even know how I managed to get in.”

“Oh, as if. It’s just because they have had more time to practice. You shouldn’t compare to them, you’re just starting. It’s not fair.”

Izzy laid back. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I will ever be as talented as them, honestly.”

April took her hands and looked into her eyes. “I know you will.”

After a silence, she realized what she was doing and withdrew them.  _ You had one job, April. _

“So, what about you? How are things?”

“Well, nothing much.” She thought she could’ve told her about the boy she was seeing, but something about it didn’t feel right. That boy was for the others, not her. “Just going to class, studying, hanging out. The usual.”  _ Freaking out about you or not you but this? _

“Seriously?” Izzy poked her leg. “Come on, there must be something you can tell me.”

“I don’t think so,” April said, starting to feel embarrassed. “Maybe that’s why I have been looking forward to this the whole week.” Or maybe it was because the last meeting they had, a few weeks ago, had left her with too many questions.

“Didn’t you read something interesting, or go to a party or something like that?” 

April was disappointed Izzy hadn’t answered with a “Me too”, but she let it slide. “I guess,” she said. “But it’s not even interesting, I want to hear about you.”  _ I have been thinking about you and wondering what you were doing this whole time.  _ She smiled. “It makes me happy to hear that you’re happy.”  _ It makes me feel like it’s true that we can hang out again. _

“Oh, I noticed.” She chuckled. “You were giving me that look as I spoke.”

Izzy froze, and April was going to ask “What?” as a reflex, but then she froze too. She remembered. They both stared at each other. 

“Hum, so, about school? Anything you’d like to tell me?” April finally said.

Izzy’s eyes wandered for a second, and then stopped. “Oh, then I have to tell you more about Blair. You would love her!”

_ Seriously? _ She didn’t know exactly why, but that was not the stuff she wanted to know more about. “Ah?” She pretended she didn’t hear to conceal her reaction. 

“That I have to tell you about Blair. She’s so cool. She has green hair and is super pretty and she does sculptures with stuff she finds on dumps or in the streets. Can you believe it? She even knows how to work with metals and all. And just yesterday she showed me a bunch of cool music, something called Riot Grrls, I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but I think it’s my favorite music now. And she knows so much about politics, I even feel, like, conservative next to her.”

Izzy was also beaming now, the smile immense, but not only April couldn’t manage to feel happy too, a weird feeling was growing in her gut. “She sounds very interesting,” she said, not entirely managing to fake a cheering tone.

But Izzy didn’t even notice, she just continued. “And I feel like I can really talk to her, you know? Like she really gets me. And that I don’t have to censor myself around her.”  _ But you have to around me?  _ April wanted to ask, struck by what her friend had just said, but Izzy kept talking. “You now, I actually told her that, hem, I like, you know, girls, and the stuff that happened with you. And not only was she totally okay with it, she told me she likes girls too!”

“What?” April froze. 

“Yeah! She even gave me some advice.” Izzy chuckled. “You should meet her.”

“You told her?” Her tone was harsh.

Only then did Izzy notice she was all stiff. “Yeah, that’s what I just said.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted to.” She frowned. “She seemed like she would be okay with it. Plus, my mom is now okay with it so, I actually forgot to tell you that, and I figured it could be nice.” 

April straightened. “You shouldn’t have told her. How dare you?” She crossed her arms.”You didn’t ask me. I didn’t want people to know.” Her voice was going up in volume. “You have no right.”

“But she doesn’t know you,” Izzy said, confused. 

“Yeah but now she  _ knows _ . I can’t believe you told her.” April didn’t really understand why she was so angry, but she was, and she started to get up. “You didn’t even think about me?! You’re such a bad friend.” She got up so suddenly she hit her head with the van’s roof.

“Hey, April, are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said, as she opened the doors. It hurt, but it would have been too embarrassing to let her now.

“Wait, April, don’t go!”

But the only answer Izzy got was the slam of the doors.

  
  


“Everything okay, Izzy?” Elena asked, putting down her fork. 

“Yes. Why?” Izzy answered, and continued eating.

“You seem kind of quiet today.”

Lexie also turned her head to check. The boys were distracted talking about other things.

“No, I’m okay, really. Just tired.”

Elena frowned and pressed her lips. “Did something happen? Did people bother you at the new school?”

“Mom, I already told you, the new school is great. And no, nothing happened. I’m fine, seriously.” Izzy sighed. “Now, can I eat?”

Elena looked at her for a while, searching for something in her daughter’s face, but Izzy just continued eating, and so Elena did the same. 

When dinner ended, the kids and Bill went to their rooms, but Elena grabbed Izzy’s arm and kept her back. 

“Izzy,” she said in a low voice. “Please, talk to me. I won’t judge. I won’t complain. I can even be helpful, don’t you think?”

“I doubt it.” She put her mom’s hand away but didn’t move. 

“Why?”

“Because I doubt anyone can help with this. It’s my stuff, okay?”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?” Elena’s tone was soft and her eyes pleaded in a way Izzy had never seen. “Plus, there’s nothing to lose, isn’t it?”

Izzy inspected her mother’s expression. She didn’t believe there was nothing to lose (she had lost so much of her mother in her life), but it seemed, to her surprise, sincere. She thought also that, for once, she had done nothing wrong, or uncommon, that could be used against her.

“Okay.” Her mom’s face lit up. “I just got into a fight with April. Or rather, she got mad at me.” 

Elena’s eyes widened. “Oh, Izzy. I didn’t know you girls still talked.” She looked down. “Are you… still together?” She looked up again.

“No.” Izzy quickly said.

For a moment, she saw relief pass through her mother’s eyes. “Mom!”

“What?” The mask was back on.

“That’s why I don’t tell you this stuff. It’s obvious you didn’t want us together then, and don’t want us now. You disgust me.” She motioned to leave.

A hand grabbed her arm again. “Izzy…”

“What?” She expected her mom to deny it, to tell her she was seeing things, to scold her even.

“I’m sorry.” She did not expect that. “You’re right.” Izzy was pretty sure she could count on one hand how many times her mother had said that to her. “It’s just… I’m getting used to it, okay? I’m sorry. It was bad, me feeling like that.” She searched for words, then took her daughter’s hand and caressed it. “Breakups are awful. You must have felt awful, and I wasn’t there for you.” Izzy could see her mother realized the truth of those words as she said them. 

Izzy felt a sudden urge to cry, and feared that if she talked too much, she would not be able to control it. “Uh, thanks.” She looked down to hide it.

“And dealing with exes is the worst.” She said, amused, and Izzy let out a chuckle.

Her mother was trying to find her gaze, still gently stroking her hand’s back with her thumb. She kissed her daughter’s forehead, and placed her daughter’s head in her chest, just below her chin, and they stayed like that for a while.

“So, why did April get mad at you?” 

Izzy removed herself from the nook and bit her lip.

“I don’t know, really. She said it was because I told Blair that we were together and that I didn’t have the right.”

“Blair, your new friend?”

“Yep.” 

Elena ran her hand through Izzy’s hair. “That’s weird, honey. Was it just because of that?”

“Yeah. She got very mad when I told her that and then she left.”

Elena pursed her lips. “Maybe April has… issues, honey. She doesn’t accept herself, I think. Maybe that’s what happened.”

“Yeah, that’s my guess too. It sucks.”

“Um-hum.” Elena nodded. “I think her parents are even worse than we are.” 

Izzy chuckled. “Poor April.” 

They sighed. 

“Well, you were right.”

“About what?” Two times in less than an hour! Had someone kidnapped her mother and replaced it with a loving clone?

“That I can’t be very helpful. I mean, I can’t solve your problem.” Elena sighed. “But what I can do is tell you that you did nothing wrong, okay? And that well, all you can do is give her time. You know, if you love someone...”

“Let them go.”

“You do know the second part of the phrase, don’t you?”

“There’s a second part?”

“Yes. It’s: ‘If you love someone, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours, and if they don’t, they never were.”

Izzy looked at Elena seriously as she let down an “Oh.” But after a while, she said: “I don’t think that somebody can ever ‘Be yours’, that’s sexist.”

Elena looked at Izzy surprised. And she let out a laugh. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually was late in part because wasn't very satisfied with how some stuff of the present April-Izzy scene but well, I hoped it was just dumb perfectionism and I was already taking so long, I'm sorry


End file.
